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Project Overview
Victoria's Country Fire Authority required an application to make the monitoring of emergencies more accessible and interactive for the public. They also wanted the local community to be able to share media and events with the CFA in the hopes of delivering more informative incident responses.
The result is a mobile emergency solution had to work across all major smartphone platforms, that empowers users to receive crucial updates quickly and more efficiently than ever thought possible. It also allows people to communicate and share vital incident details with CFA HQ and Volunteers.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
4 x App developers - IOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile
2 x Backend platform and integration specialists
1 x UAT
1 x Project Management
1 x Solution Architect
Project Brief
FireReady is a unique application of Internet, mobile and social technologies in the emergency services sector. The app harnesses the powerful forces of mobile enablement, crowd-sourcing and social networking to an invaluable public service. In the process, FireReady both raises public awareness of fire-related danger and preparedness, and allows emergency services personnel to tap into a vast resource of new information. In essence, FireReady makes every member of the public a CFA volunteer.
FireReady is thus a powerful demonstration of the promise of social, mobile and localisation technologies. Emergency services information was previously top-down, distributed from a centralised agency, tasked with collection and reporting through dedicated agents. With FireReady, information is now communication, both top-down and bottom-up. CFA personnel can now focus on curation, management and response. The public meanwhile, are empowered as active agents, providing mutual and co-operative support to each other, and the emergency services personnel involved both on-scene and in terms of response management.
Project Innovation / Need
CFA FireReady empowers users to easily access and automatically receive incident information and provides them with a foolproof way to submit their own observations and contributions.
The overarching design principle was to ensure ease of use at arm's reach, no matter what the conditions or location. This type of “crowd-sourced" communication must be simple and immediate, requiring little thought or premeditation.
Deep, engaging user experiences are critical if an app is to be successful. FireReady delivers on this with room to spare.
The objectives for FireReady were:
- to raise community awareness of fire danger, the need for fire readiness and to have personal action plans;
- to capitalise on emerging technologies to engage public support in cases of fire, to enable the public to be active participants in assisting emergency services.
- increasing planned burns awareness and reducing false alarms by incorporating DSE planned burns information
To these ends, FireReady has been an unqualified success. It is the largest cross-platform project of its type to be undertaken in Australia. Moreover, the FireReady platform continues to be a world-leading benchmark for emergency services tools.
User Experience
CFA FireReady empowers users to easily access and automatically receive incident information and provides them with a foolproof way to submit their own observations and contributions.
The overarching design principle was to ensure ease of use at arms reach, no matter what the conditions or location. This type of crowd-sourced communication must be simple and immediate, requiring little thought or premeditation.
Advanced integration of social media and networking ensures high levels of engagement with the public. Social media is an important, additional tool for Victorias fire services to reach a broader section of the community. This is about using all available means to provide information to the public" comments Martin Anderson, Digital Media Manager for the CFA and Gridstones client and key partner for FireReady.
Visually, mobile apps must be distinct, appealing and enjoyable to use. Deep, engaging user experiences are critical if an app is to be successful. FireReady delivers on this with room to spare.
Project Marketing
The App was launched as part of the CFA Bush Fire Week in Oct 2011. There was a major media push with new information presented on most or the Victorian News on TV and Radio.
Both State based and local newspapers had a 2 page Bushfire feature where the App was featured as part of the overall bushfire awareness push.
All regional based CFA stations have the App featured in brochures that are distributed to the public at events and mailbox drops.
Tags
iOS
This category relates to the best application on the iOS platform.
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